


everything that first went wrong

by weeesi



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Developing Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, First Meetings, Freeform, John pre-Sherlock, M/M, POV Alternating, Sherlock pre-John
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-14
Updated: 2016-01-14
Packaged: 2018-05-13 21:36:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5717953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weeesi/pseuds/weeesi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is the story of everything that first went wrong, they agree. Sandy hair and bowstring lips and shoulders and hands and years of getting there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	everything that first went wrong

**Author's Note:**

> TW for brief (non-explicit) mentions of suicidal ideation, violence/injury, drug use

John studies his toes. Small pink islands in the swirls of opaque bath water (lavender oily silk soft soap a luxury, clandestine) remind him of the way he can’t ever seem to tell the truth. Isolated in their forced connections they slowly contract into versions of themselves.

John is nineteen and a secret.

He pulls the plug to drain the water and sits, shivering, the bath an empty ocean.

 

**

 

This is the story of everything that first went wrong, they agree. Sandy hair and bowstring lips and shoulders and hands and years of getting there.

 

**

 

Soil or sand or salt or sweat is in every crevasse, every pocket, every touch and taste. John is in Afghanistan and John is afraid of the reason why he is not afraid to be in Afghanistan. He remembers his goggles and shoves them down over his eyes just as the house behind him explodes with gunfire. A ricochet of human suffering behind the blurry buzz in his ears and the way his fingers stay perfectly still as they feel for his pack, for his gun, last for his body, his legs, his arms, fine, he’s fine, he can’t hear, he’s fine.

John loses nearly two pints of blood from the bullet wound in his shoulder. He grinds his teeth together until his jaw is numb.

He’s fine. He’s fine.

 

**

 

Spinning lights and the smell of antiseptic and rotting food and it’s too late, isn’t it, because he’ll never be right back where he was before, now, before now, _now_ , never that moment of perfection again where his imperfections were in his stupid brain and not his too long too lean too loathsome body that fails him and questions his resolve. _Push against me_ , he thinks, _don’t give up your tells_. _Weakness is unforgivable and avoidable._ He tightens the belt around his arm and feels his blood burn.

Sherlock is nineteen years old and a genius.

 

**

 

John learns of his father’s death while in hospital. He receives a single text from his sister and a single phone call two days later with numbers and lists and empty words that echo in the static. He rings off and reminds himself of old demons, then whispers promises into his pillow. He’s alone now, in a way, more than he’s ever been, and in a way it feels like the kind of lonely that could turn into something worth carrying.

He stays in hospital for two more weeks. Unnecessary, he knows it is. He should be more careful, but this is an indulgence. John will never come back to Afghanistan, after all.

 

**

 

Ten years of being right in a world that puts you in a box and Sherlock ends up with holes in his arms. Not his fault when it could have been somewhere else more permanent. He wants, so much he wants! These are secrets written in code and locked behind his ribs where no one will ever see, not even Molly, even if he dies and she cuts open his chest per his instructions and looks to see what’s written there. It’s a trick! Nothing! The ink will have faded long before. No one’s ever read it and no one will ever read it. He figures that’s the point.

He is alone except for when he isn’t and he tries to forget his ghosts.

 

**

 

 _I’m not interested_ , John says, _I want things that should be things that I want_. He moves to London. His bedsit is furnished and somehow seems to envelope him. Every time he leaves and returns he is replanted in the blank walls and dries out like a seed, bleeds sadness in clouds until he stuffs the holes in his thoughts.

 _What if I leave again_? John thinks. _Where would I find someone who would want me?_

London weaves a web that leaves him feeling see-through.

 

**

 

She insisted. He wasn’t going to agree but she insisted. Baker Street is ideal for hiding from his brother until he realises that subsidies come with strings. His head aches from working out and reworking out reasons for quitting and not quitting and what does it matter anyway when your life expectancy is contingent on your made-up job and your penchant for not behaving like a human being? He makes his bed and throws his mattress on the floor and when he sees the red patterned armchair in a jumble sale he gives the old woman ten quid which is ten quid more than he should have paid for it. It looks broken.

The chair’s not his. He already knows it belongs to someone else.

 

**

 

Fine yes, he agrees to go to Barts. Yes, he’ll see this second person. It’s not like Stamford would intentionally destroy his excuses for normality, isn’t that the best thing to tell yourself when you’re tired? John agrees. Yes, he’ll lend him his phone. Where are they meeting? What’s his name? John agrees.

Green ladders.

John thinks the man knew about Afghanistan before, he must have, somehow. Magic isn’t a real thing. It felt good, owning his history and wanting someone to replay it for him, whatever the risks. This man is a scientist. He’s a genius. He’s dangerous, possibly, because he says things out loud that John thinks about in the dark. Love at first sight isn’t a real thing.

 _I’m not interested_ , he thinks. _I’m not interested. I’m just lonely._

 

**

 

He’s found the owner of the red patterned chair. He knew it -- if he’s truly being honest, really honest about the pull of his gut, his instincts, really stopped to consider – he knew it at the footfalls on the tile floor. He knew it when fingers slipped into pockets for phones and stories and wary guards were carefully raised against him. He knew it and he haphazardly throws boxes of books around the flat later that evening to convince the owner of the chair that _he_ knew it too.

At second thought, he throws the union jack pillow into the red broken curve and it nestles itself upright. He waits for the ink on his heart to stop glowing, stop lighting up his lungs. Sherlock holds his breath until it hurts.

 

**

 

John uses a cane. John doesn’t have a limp anymore. John leaps up steps two at a time and jumps between buildings and doesn’t stumble. John has a bullet fragment in his shoulder. John’s legs are strong. John calls a cabbie and kills a different one. John lives at 221B Baker Street and burns the memories of Before.

 

**

 

Sherlock wakes up to listen for another man’s heartbeat in the kitchen, in the lounge, in the loo, in the corridor, in the bedroom, in the empty space he made inside the blood cells tumbling coal-dark blue around each other inside the plumbing of his veins. He waits for a cough and a rustle of newspaper. Dust covers the remnants of despair. _No need for that anymore_ , he thinks, as he tosses aside a future he’d planned for himself.

 

**

 

_What’s something you’ve never told anyone?_

_I can’t tell you._

_What’s something you’ve only told me?_

_Everything true._


End file.
